I was pondering why I’m struggling with myself to get to the office. Sure a 100km communte is no fun. But is that all? Our cashflow isn’t great at the moment, but that is a chicken and egg thing. If I don’t drive the business it wont grow by itself.

Then it occurred to me. My warehouse is located so far away because my father located it when he controlled the group. I now have a new business unrelated to any of that history. But I still had the remnants of the old business when I located it conveniently for the support staff.

Support staff who did not survive the transition from old, direct sales to modern, customer focus, e-tail. And the rent is 50% cheaper than anything closer to home.

Subconsciously the drive reminds me of the succession wars. While they are settled (some paperwork to finalise still), the emotions run strong. No wonder I don’t look forward to the drive.

I had contempt for CEO’s who relocate their corporate headquarters immediately after taking over – a tremendous waste of shareholders’ money. Now it is a also catalyst for change. Relocating allows a business to create a new image, future and destiny. Or it could still be a monstorous waste.

Entrepreneurial companies must be faster and more aggressive than their competitors. Entrepreneurs maintain massive action to reach their goals and the working environment is strong influencer.

My lease is up in October, so I have some planning to do.

I’ve been depressed by the succession wars and blogging just hasn’t been inspirational. That’s interesting as I think I write best when I am not at my emotional best.

Anyway, it looks like the legal battles may be settled. A few administrative things to take care of and I should cease defending five or six legal actions. Aren’t families fun?

If that happens I won’t have to worry about telegraphing moves. Sure I’ll have to worry about confidentiality clauses but that will mean I’ll be able to return to my regularly scheduled ponderings.

They told me it was totally not-negotiable so don’t bother getting legal advice just sign it. Yeah right. So my lawyers said don’t sign it.

So while the settlement negotiations fall apart we have mentions and orders on some of the legal fronts.

Actually I feel re-energised for the fight. Scary thought.

For the record most of this months entries were deliberately not published. I don’t need to
1) Telegraph my every move
2) Get sued further

This morning they called with a counter offer requesting interest on the unpaid balance. Once I triple checked their and my math I agreed. So we seem to have a settlement. Now we just need to draw up the deed. That should be interesting given how one-sided their Head of Agreement was.

Hopefully they’ll play it fairly straight. But I won’t believe it until the deed is signed.

So I replied to her email and spoke to the go-between. (Aside: aren’t all these codenames tricky?). Then I called my lawyers and got some general tactical advice. The summary of which was offer what you can.

So I offered them what I could. All the non-monetary things they wanted, 1/3 of their cash settlement offer now and another 1/3 in 12 months. I told them I would enter a multi-year deal and I was offering all I could over 12 months (2/3 of their claim). They said they wouldn’t wait for 5 years either.

They wanted 100% of the cash. I was afraid they’d take that position. I said “I’ll give you the other 1/3 after another 12 months but that was all I had and wouldn’t threaten the company by committing to a outlay that wasn’t viable”. They’d get back to me.

A while later I got a call, they wanted 100% paid 1/3 now and 2/3 in equal weekly installments over 40 weeks. They tried to play the emotional line about building a company from nothing over 20years to get nothing. I thought the $1Million they’d got so far wasn’t really nothing, but didn’t mention it. Instead I told her I’d call her back once I looked at the cashflow implications of their demands.

I called the lawyer, who said to stick to the message. I called the go-between who said stick to the message.

Then I got angry. No way the company can pay that sort of weekly drain. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. Aside from the cash I am giving up a few valuable assets including a 50% shareholding in their childcare centre and current business. So I called them back and told her that. She said 50% of nothing is nothing. I stuck to my message about responsible spending and that is all I have.

She didn’t believe me, and we’d probably end up in court.

I repeated the message I don’t want to spend a fortune in court, I do want to settle this and am offering them 100% of what they want. I am giving them 100% of what I can conceivably give. If they don’t want it then at least I tried. She said they’d let me know.

Oh well that’s what happens when the other side prepares the documents. Obviously I wont sign it. At this stage I’m not sure I can pay them all the money they want anyway. So I’m trying to figure out how much they will take and what’s the most I can afford to give them.

The Geezer and The Wicked Step-Mother told us what they want to go away. Now I need to decide if giving them what they want hurts less than continuing the fight. Basically I give them a wad of cash and some non-monetary things (like control of some companies and products).

There is nothing absolutely objectionable about the non-monetary side of the offer. So now it’s a matter of working out how to give them that stuff without incurring large expense or liabilities. The monetary settlement is trickier. Obviously I can’t go into the level of detail I’d like. It is really tempting to do an exact breakdown.

The way the deal was put to me was “here is an offer, pay them $X and give them this stuff, in return all actions cease”. I took all actions to include the AVO complaint as well as their actions against me. If we settle the dispute I don’t need to fear the Geezer attacking me out of frustration with legal battles. In the spirit of give and take I withdrew the AVO application.

Credit where it’s due, the Geezer checked with me if I would be upset if he pursued a costs claim against the Police. While it is unlikely the Police would make me pay a costs order against them, they would not be well-disposed to me if they lost a costs order. I reminded the other side that we are trying to harmoniously resolve the dispute and upsetting my reputation with the Police was not good. I told them I’d appreciate it if they didn’t pursue costs. They didn’t pursue costs and the Magistrate congratulated us on being able to resolve some of our disputes.

Anyway I thought some of you would like to know there is light at the end of the tunnel. At least it seems like it.

After the assault matter was heard (he pled guilty, no conviction recorded) a date was set to hear the AVO application.Next week we’re in court. I don’t think the Magistrate will grant the application – the Geezer has stuck to the letter of his undertakings – so why go through with the application? I prefer to focus on the fights I can win. If an order is not made the Geezer will probably feel he “won” that fight.

On the other hand the AVO complaint is because there are fears that the Geezer ”may physically hurt, or harass, intimidate, or molest or stalk” me. My staff hate me working late alone. My family get nervous about threats that have been made against me. I know the Geezer would go for round 2 if there were no witnesses around.

But do I want to go through the pain of proving on the balance of probabilities that I fear the Geezer and those fears are reasonable.

The most annoying thing about the matter is that AVO’s were created for circumstances like these. They should be almost automatic. But a good lawyer can make voodoo happen. That reminds me that I saw Chicago (with Rene Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere) on Monday night.

He denied punching me or hitting me with an office chair, but admitted only pushing and shoving me.

However they argued he was a fine citizen an a pillar of the community. They handed up references to support that claim.

His lawyer claimed he lost control of his company after 20 successful years through some machiavelian means. His laywer also said I took control of the company when he suffered a debilitating stroke two years ago.

Successful company? Please explain the three company liquidations since 1995.

The stroke was news to me and his siblings. It’s a pretty amazing recovery to assault me 12 months later and stand in court unaided after 2 years.

Anyway, he deeply regretted losing his cool and pled guilty to common assault.

The court accepted the guilty plea, did not record a conviction and put him on a six month good behaviour bond. A great result for him and I’m actually very happy as well. So win-win for all.

Then we dealt with my request for an Apprehended Violence Order. They didn’t want a bar of it and offered to extend their undertaking to not contact me without our lawyers being present. After some discussion we’re in court in February next year on the AVO. In the meantime his undertaking is part of his bond.

The next round is over 10 years of long service leave he and The Wicked Step-Mother claim I owe them.

But it goes to show that if you ever get into trouble with the police, You better get a lawyer, son, you better get a real good one.

On the one hand Dad’s absence is no skin off my nose, on the other it’s a sad behaviour I saw when my parents divorced. It’s just not right.

So the succession wars at my company are probably almost over. I suspect Mutual Assured Destruction is almost inevitable.

It is probably cheaper to stop fighting the court battles and show faith in the legal structure I put in place early last year. Even if I lose all the court cases there are no assets at risk. But the principal of the dispute sticks in my throat. Not contesting these claims seems like an admission that they are true and not some delusion dreamed up in my father’s and step-mother’s minds.

Lastly I had a distributor quit today. Again he wasn’t the best I had. I didn’t even think he’d come back after the Christmas break, but now I have to find and train a replacement.

I found myself wishing for a business that didn’t rely on distributors. Give me something with multiple locations and staff who show up or are fired.

But I’ll bet there’s a retailer out there who would kill to swap businesses with me.

Actually that reminds me of a discussion I had in a supplier’s showroom with a retailer. He and I got to complaining about the worst aspects of Wholesale/Direct Marketing versus Retail. Everybody thinks the other guy in the supply chain is making more money than them. It passed the time while we were waiting for the invoices to be produced.

Anyway tomorrow is a new day filled with fresh challenges and opportunities. I’m going to wallow tonight and attack the business fresh in the morning. After all it’s only money.

So who would benefit most from grabbing our accounts system. Or benefit from preventing me from proving a claim of financial impropriety.

Luckily I have off site backups of the important financial and stock information.

So far he’s told his skewed view to my sister, his siblings, and his mother. My sister didn’t buy it, but it’s surprising how persuasive his family find it . Now I understand how and why my mother was shunned by his family. I have shakey moments where I feel down.

Anyway that is all background to my feeling of two steps forward, one step backward. My best way to deal with depression is to become accountable to someone else. This blog is one form of accountability. I also do a daily call with my accountant acting as business coach.

I have some notes on recent events that I’ll incorporate into some other posts, but I’ll enter them in correct chronological order. So some of those entries will show up before this one.

The accountant thought my figures looked right and most of Dad’s drawings would go against his loan account. That means that I’ve paid most of the loan account off and the business is almost fully mine. Even if my figures were off by $50K, I’ve got most of the loans paid out.

Dad claimed that the opening stock would be closer to $2 Million. The accountant told him we wouldn’t be in this mess if that were true, at best the stock will value at between $500K and $800K.

Dad blamed me for poor management. I ignored that. It turns out that he is really pisseedd off that I phrased option three as “the tap is turned off and there is no more cash for you”.

After some further tension we agreed
1) to stop paying non-core expenses (and therefore all costs associated with Dad and TWS).
2) I’d revise the opening stock count as at 1 July 2002 and we’d agree on an appropriate valuation with monthly payments to commence until the loan balance is paid out.

Dad thought I could do all this in 6 weeks. The accountant said it would take 3 months to see if we could turn the company around. So I have until the end of August 2003 to get this thing on track.

Dad said he wouldn’t approach any of my distributors, nor place any orders with my suppliers. He admitted he’d flown our Queensland manager down to talk and meet some suppliers (why?).

I called the office after the meeting and left a message for the manager to wait there until I got there. TWS spoke to my Dad and they decided it wasn’t a good idea, so she drove him away before I got there.

So I know Dad’s cooking something up.

They demanded I pack up my stuff and leave immediately or they would bodily throw me out. They were angry and it had to run it’s course.

After some rudeness and yelling Dad called the company accountant. He offered to meet with us on Tuesday at 11:30.

Quotes:
Dad: “Slit anyone’s throat in business but never slit your father’s, just as I’d never slit yours.”
TyroCEO: “But you have… to the tune of $300,000!”

Dad: “Get out. Get your shit and leave. The stock is mine.”
TyroCEO: “No it’s not.”
Dad: “Yes it is.”
TyroCEO: “No it’s not.”
Dad: “Yes it is.”
TyroCEO: “No it’s not.”
Dad: “Yes it is.”
TyroCEO: “Are we going to do this for the next two hours or is there some point?”